Gigabit network growth accelerates in first quarter
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Editor
| 01 June 2021
Even though it suggested that the way in which broadband networks are used may have changed forever after what it called pandemic-fuelled rapid growth last year, an OpenVault study has shown that normal seasonal patterns for data usage appear to be returning and in-line with pre-pandemic seasonal patterns.
OPenreach broadband Rack multiple cables 12 may 2021
The Open Vault Broadband Industry Report (OVBI) for Q1 2021 showed that after a 2020 that it said was “as far from normal as you can get,” broadband trends returned to historic trends of quarter-on-quarter flat growth, or even small declines in the first quarter of the year.

Network users continued to adapt to the new broadband environment by embracing faster speeds with data usage moderating in the first quarter of 2021. The faster speeds increasing came from gigabit. Just under a tenth (9.8%) of all subscribers were found to have provisioned for gigabit speeds at the end of Q1, a year-on-year increase of 261% compared with the 3.8% reported in the same quarter a year ago, and a 15% increase from the 8.5% adoption rate in the final three-month period of 2020. Over the past two quarters the percentage of subscribers provisioned for gigabit-speed service has risen 75%, from 5.6% in the third quarter of 2020.

The report also noted that slightly more than four-fifths of network subscribers were provisioned for 100 Mbps speeds or higher, and that fewer than 5% are at 20 Mbps or slower. Subscribers on usage-based billing (UBB) plans were adopting higher-speed packages faster than those on flat-rate billing (FRB) plans. The percentage of UBB subscribers on 100 Mbps tiers in Q1 21 grew 35% year-over-year, more than double the annual growth of 17% for FRB subscribers.

The monthly weighted average usage – including both UBB and FRB subscribers – was 461.7 GBytes, up nearly 15% from 402.5 a year earlier and down 4.3% from 482.6 compared with the fourth quarter of 2020.

Upstream consumption was seen to be flat amid seasonal average usage declines. Nearly all of the decline in monthly average usage occurred in the downstream; monthly average upstream usage remained relatively flat when compared to the 31 GBytes recorded in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Power usage and extreme power usage – defined as consumption of more than 1 TB and 2 TB per month respectively - declined in Q121 with the percentage of the former dropping 12% to 12.4% on an annual basis and from the 14.1% recorded at the end of the fourth quarter of last year. The percentage of extreme power users declined 14%, to 1.8% from Q420’s 2.2%. 1 TB power users on UBB plans declined 15.4% in 1Q21; the decline for those 1 TB users on unlimited FRB plans was less than half of that, or 7.1%.

The Open Vault Broadband Industry Report also flagged that UBB operators were having more success at slowing the trajectory of bandwidth usage on their network than FRB operators were, despite the former operators having a higher percentage of higher speed and higher ARPU subscribers. It concluded by saying the widening gap in Q121 of total bandwidth usage between UBB networks and those of FRB networks and the revenue and profitability implications that it may represent was marked.